Why The Bureau: XCOM Declassified could be the best title of August

The week of August 18 will be one of the busiest of the year. In that span, Disney Infinity is launching and will likely sell like hotcakes to the younger set. Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist will probably be the must-have stealth title of the year. Meanwhile the bombastic Saints Row 4 will draw on their growing fan base.

But the most intriguing game coming out that week has to be The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It’s the most original of the bunch. It’s a project that I’ve followed since it was announced at E3 2010. Since then, The Bureau has gone through several drastic changes and the game I recently played is far different from the one I first saw. The most noticeable change is the perspective: It’s gone from the first person to the third person, a move that feels right.

When I saw it three years ago, XCOM, as it was known back then, seemed more of a game that was adapted to use the Bioshock engine. It seemed like a natural dovetail for the developer, 2K Marin, which cut its teeth on the genetically modified shooter and later created the sequel. The combination of the characters, midcentury setting and user interface resembled the team’s past work. But now with the wholesale changes, the game has its own identity.

Sectoids still remain part of the XCOM experience in The Bureau except this time they’re enslaved by another alien race.

DEVELOPING INNOVATION: It took months and plenty of iterations before 2K Marin discovered the correct fit, and nowhere was that evolution more apparent than in the development of the user interface. Lead UI designer Pat Guarino showed the history of The Bureau’s main gameplay feature — Battle Focus. It’s a twist to the squad-based combat that lets players slow down the battle to a crawl so they can direct two other party members. At the event where I played through first part of the game, I had a chance to talk to Guarino and other members of the development team.

Players may not notice it with the final product, but there was plenty of work simplifying, tweaking and changing up Battle Focus so that it just feels right. It’s what allows the third-person shooter to be its own game but still feel like part of the XCOM franchise. Guarino said the problem the team faced was that there was no way to smartly control agents and incorporate it into visceral experience. Earlier iterations had simple commands and buffs, but nowhere near the depth that’s required to make players feel like they’re commanding a squad.

But the turning point of The Bureau was E3 2011, according to creative director Morgan Gray. During that version of the game, they partially shifted to a third-person perspective when players gave out commands. At the time, it was still mostly a first-person game, but the move to give players more of an outside viewpoint worked so well. “It gave you a better idea of placement,” Guarino said. He also mentioned that the slowed time was also intentional. If 2K Marin just paused the game, players would have no sense of motion and they couldn’t see the direction in which enemies were running. It also boosted the tension, making players feel the urgency of sending out commands.

Sometimes it’s best to stick together during a fight so that teammates can help you out if you go down.

HOW BATTLE FOCUS WORKS: In some of the more radical mock-ups, Guarino showed how the team took that third-person perspective to the extreme and turned Battle Focus into a top-down viewpoint to simplify planning. It almost looked like a visually impressive XCOM: Enemy Unknown in that version. But 2K Marin settled on a tighter camera behind the characters. At that angle, players can still feel like they’re in the gunbattle, but more importantly, switching characters is still easy and accessing abilities using a radial menu that fans out is simple. Players can even queue up actions in combat. The result is innovative, refreshing and polished. It manages to blend action and strategy in a way that feels natural to the series.

For example, early in the game, players are faced with a scenario where a teammate can set up an autoturret and another can fire at an enemy. That frees up the player to go down a side room and flank enemies. Players can see parts of the plan, but it’s all in the execution, and when it works, the results are satisfying. But what will separate experts from novices in The Bureau is how players react when their plans goes awry. They’ll have to be able to think on their feet and use Battle Focus to adjust to the unexpected.

That’s a theme mentioned early on in The Bureau when XCOM commander Myron Faulke delivers the agency’s mission statement: “Survive, adapt, win.” And that brings me to the other compelling driving force of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. The title is a character-driven origin story for what’s to become XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Players take on the role of William James Carter, a government agent with a spotty past who is recruited to XCOM by Faulke. He’s about to be initiated into the program when the aliens launch a surprise attack on the United States, and he gets thrown into the fire as the devastated country tries to get a handle on the situation and formulate a response strategy.

Sleepwalkers are people that the aliens have infected. They use them to infiltrate the highest levels of government.

FASCINATING ORIGIN STORY: It’s an attractive concept as players feel as though they’re on the ground floor of something big. There’s a new-car freshness to everything in the XCOM base as players explore the hub world and interact with members of the team. Carter will get to know colleagues such as Nico DaSilva and Angela Weaver (a character I’ve seen three different versions of). He’ll find side missions or clues to other survivors of the attack. But more importantly, the game lets players share in the establishment of the agency.

What’s even more compelling about the world 2K Marin creates is that it’s set in 1960s America and the team tried to hold true to the period as players see workers smoke in the office, field agents dress in era-specific garb and allies tote high-tech gadgets that look clunky but appropriate for the time. With that mind-set, the team also limited the gender of field agents; players can only bring men to the battlefield though there are NPC specific exceptions. Players can still customize the names, faces, etc., but just don’t expect to make a character named Dana Scully and expect her to fight aliens. Also, players have to keep in mind that if an agent dies in battle, they effectively lose them for the campaign.

This scenario presents problems though because if players concentrate leveling up a small circle of allies they can hurt themselves later in the campaign if those field agents perish. To mitigate that issue, players can delegate and send recruits on separate missions that earn them experience points. This is just another layer of strategy to make The Bureau feel more like an XCOM game.

Players should heal allies before they bleed out.

From what I’ve played, 2K Marin is well on its way to making a game that lives up to the franchise’s pedigree. It has that twitchy quality of a third-person shooter complete with a cover system, but at the same time, players need intelligence in the gunfight. They need to parse the battlefield, figure out a battle plan, set it up with Battle Focus and execute it with Carter as the point man. It’s harder than it sounds and the game’s difficulty ramps up quickly as players land in Rosemont, Ga.

There’s a lot of factors involved in a mission’s success. It’s not just the skill of a player or the tactics in an attack. The difference between success and failure may come down to bringing the right squad members with Carter. All of this offers an unbelievably amount of depth with a fascinating world and story to explore. The Bureau looks like it’s going to be another way for fans to fall in love with the XCOM series all over again.